


He strips The mask from my soul with a kiss

by stumpyy



Category: Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Genre: F/M, Older Woman/Younger Man, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 07:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4910956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stumpyy/pseuds/stumpyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The brief affair with an older woman that Angel confesses to Tess on their wedding night. </p><p>Angel goes to London to seek a business education, he seeks an internship at a small perfumery run by a brother and his widowed sister-in-law, Lillian. He stays with them as a guest for a couple of days before he is officially introduced to the business and the way it’s run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He strips The mask from my soul with a kiss

Lillian was the first to step into the familiar damp darkness that radiated from the walls of the cellar, a meadow of smells gathered in her brother’s domain and her personal treasury. Ever since her husband passed away she had become the visionary behind the counter. Her husband’s younger brother, now the owner of Abelmann’s Perfumes in name only chose to spend his days recreating odours already perfected by others in the family like a steam engine - useless without an operator. 

Angel trailed behind her, carefully watching his step down the winding staircase, wrinkling his nose at the abundance of the recently prepared Mille Fleurs, a smell familiar to him in its essence, but foreign in its intensity. 

“This is the heart of the store, where scents are created from dusts and gums and flowers,” she spoke, her voice swelling with pride. “My late husband and his brother spent years studying the chemistry of scent from the very best, so you won’t be spending much of your time here.”

Angel watched quietly as she ran her hands over the glass apparatus longingly, catching a glint of sadness in her leaden eyes just before they became hidden by the coal-black of her hair. What he saw was the flashing memories of years gone by hiding under benches in lecture halls, picking up scratches of knowledge that were so often disregarded by the privileged men as if chemistry was some thick-accented brawl of a foreign preacher. 

Below the stairs the airs were almost intoxicating to an outsider, in the store above they were reduced in their potency to float about as sweet temptations, stopping would-be customers in their tracks, inciting them to enter the store. Now the store was shut and the drawn blinds blocked out all kinds of curious gazes, save for specks of moonlight that slithered through the cracks making the stained glass reflections quiver about the room. 

“Here, in this very room we turn the wonders of science and nature into money,” stated Lillian bluntly, “Here you will learn the craft of persuasion. You see, Mr Clare, in this trade it is important to be able to judge a customer’s passion the moment they step through that door.” 

Angel was bewitched by the idea that in the city desire served a bigger purpose than just being an object of scorn and disdain. In London, desire was a currency, an ingredient, a force that kept the wheel of business turning. The life he left behind in Wessex was about necessity, it was about what one needs, here in the city it was all about what one wants. 

“People say they are looking for bottles and phials of something sweet, something floral, something foreign or oriental. What they are really seeking is, of course, love, passion, adventure,” she came closer as her tone lowered to a whisper, “What you must well remember, Mr Clare, is that many believe we dwell in sorcery and witchcraft and you must work very hard to keep that illusion in perfect order.” 

“You are a young man, Mr Clare, and at this point you may or may not know that it is in the nature of the human experience to construct your own facades around ideas, cities, shops or even people and if and when a facade comes crashing down its debris hit you with a dumbfounding force.” 

She couldn’t entirely grasp the reason why she was suddenly reminiscing about her marriage to someone who was neither a stranger or an acquaintance nor a friend. Perhaps it was that perpetual call of her womanly nature that she couldn’t escape from, a task rendered wholly impractical by social expectations. 

“I can see how you may be thrown off by my youth, Ms Abelmann, although I must say that it is the youth that will drive forth new initiatives in business, in religion and in agriculture. We are too set in tradition and in smothering ancient values, and one can only break free of those values through unorthodox thinking that comes more naturally to a youthful soul,” he finished, breathless and scared that his passionate blunder could be seen as an offence. 

“Well, Mr Clare, I shall be happy to see your youthful entrepreneurship at work,” said Lillian with a half-smile. 

The storeroom was a small enclosed space of stacked boxes, spools of ribbon and rows of perfume bottles that shone with an exquisite blue light in the presence of a single candle that Lillian placed on one of the shelves. As she went through the locations of every little bow and bottle cap he found himself distracted by the sudden, maddening infatuation with the crimson velvet architecture of her lips that caught the candlelight as she spoke, making him feel like thirsty pilgrim at an altar. Suddenly, the room felt silent and that’s when he realised that his bold unmoving eyes have been discovered. Her own eyes showed him an impish glisten of the candle that he mistook for a reflection of her soul and it was in this moment that he clasped her close and kissed her. 

The kiss had undone any feeble attempts at subduing her feelings towards the apprentice of her household. He seemed to have possessed a radical mind that was both fluid and rigid, unlike her late husband’s whose decision to educate his wife in the ways of perfumery came from his thirst for increased revenue, not some noble notions of equality. It was for Angel’s mind and its potential that she was willing to allow herself this weakness, she thought:

“he strips  
The mask from my soul with a kiss—I crawl  
His slave,—soul, body, and all!”

She was her parents’ daughter, her husband’s wife, her brother’s sister and it was time to be her own person at last. As she slammed him into the shelves a box of red ribbon fell into the dark abyss of the stone floor that the candlelight could not reach.


End file.
